Download Complexity DTC Mini-project Proposal: Blood-borne virus transmission on networks of cliques

Complexity DTC Mini-project Proposal:
Blood-borne virus transmission on networks of cliques
Offered by Thomas House (email: [email protected])
Warwick Mathematics Institute
Background
Infectious disease remains a leading cause of human mortality and morbidity worldwide,
particularly in the developing world. Epidemiologists look for patterns in disease data, hoping
to understand the spread of pathogens and ultimately inform their control. Since we cannot do
a controlled experiment by releasing dangerous transmissible agents into the human
population, mathematical modelling has become an indispensable part of modern infectious
disease epidemiology [1].
Hepatitis C is caused by a blood-borne virus (HCV) that infects millions of new cases each
year, and contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths [2]. Globally, the epidemiology of
HCV infection is complex [3], but is most likely driven by injecting drug use.
Project
The networks of HCV transmission formed by injecting drug users (IDUs) can be modelled
through the making and breaking of cliques. Once this approximation has been made, the
population-level transmission dynamics for the virus can be written exactly.
The project will look at targeted interventions aimed at the IDU population to make optimal
use of resources for control of blood-borne viruses. The methods used will be analytical
formulation and numerical analysis of a high-dimensional set of ordinary differential
equations. The end-users of this kind of work are public health workers.
This proposal can be extended either in mathematical / formal directions, by use of
methodology from optimal control theory, or in applied directions in collaboration with Dr.
Sutton from the Health Economics group of Birmingham University.
References
[1] M. J. Keeling and P. Rohani. Modeling Infectious Diseases in Humans and Animals.
Princeton University Press (2007).
[2] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs164/en/
[3] P. Vickerman et. al. Can hepatitis C virus prevalence be used as a measure of injectionrelated human immunodeficiency virus risk in populations of injecting drug users? An
ecological analysis. Addiction, 105, 311-318 (2009).